# The Best American Poetry 2003

The Best American Poetry 2003, a volume in The Best American Poetry series, was edited by David Lehman and by guest editor Yusef Komunyakaa.
Ron Smith, reviewing the book in The Richmond Times-Dispatch, wrote that Galway Kinnell's When the Towers Fell is "often moving, even if it doesn't manage the fusion of Walt Whitman and T. S. Eliot it aims for." Another poem in the volume focusing on the effects of terrorism is Susan Dickman's Skin. Smith thought the better poems in this edition were by Marilyn Nelson, Rodney Jones, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Tony Hoagland, and Ted Kooser.

## Poets and poems included

| Poet | Poem | Publication(s) where poem previously appeared |
| Jonathan Aaron | "The End of Out of the Past" | The London Review of Books |
| Beth Anderson | from "A Locked Room" | Poetry Project Newsletter |
| Nin Andrews | "Dedicated to the One I Love" | Gargoyle |
| Wendell Berry | "Some Further Words" | American Poetry Review |
| Frank Bidart | "Curse" | The Threepenny Review |
| Diann Blakely | "Rambling on My Mind" | Bomb |
| Bruce Bond | "Art Tatum" | The Paris Review |
| Catherine Bowman | from "1000 Lines" | TriQuarterly |
| Rosemary Catacalos | "Perfect Attendance: Short Subjects Made from the Staring Photos of Strangers" | The Progressive |
| Joshua Clover | "Aeon Flux:June" | Ploughshares |
| Billy Collins | "Litany" | Poetry |
| Michael S. Collins | "Six Sketches: When a Soul Breaks" | Callaloo |
| Carl Dennis | "World History" | Poetry |
| Susan Dickman | "Skin" | Rhino |
| Rita Dove | "Fox Trot Fridays" | Callaloo |
| Stephen Dunn | "Open Door Blues" | Brilliant Corners |
| Stuart Dybek | "Journal" | Tin House |
| Charles Fort | "The Vagrant Hours" | Mississippi Review |
| James Galvin | "Ponderosa" | Boston Review |
| Amy Gerstler | "An Offer Received in This Morning's Mail:" | American Poetry Review |
| Louise Glück | "Landscape" | The Threepenny Review |
| Michael Goldman | "Report on Human Beings" | Ontario Review |
| Ray Gonzalez | "Max Jacob's Shoes" | New American Writing |
| Linda Gregg | "Beauty" | The New Yorker |
| Mark Halliday | "The Opaque" | Colorado Review |
| Michael S. Harper | "Rhythmic Arrangements (on prosody)" | LUNA |
| Matthea Harvey | "Sad Little Breathing Machine" | Verse |
| George V. Higgins | "Villanelle" | 88 |
| Edward Hirsch | "The Desire Manuscripts" | The Paris Review |
| Tony Hoagland | "Summer Night" | 88 |
| Richard Howard | "Success" | The New Yorker |
| Rodney Jones | "Ten Sighs from a Sabbatical" | Five Points |
| Joy Katz | "Some Rain" | Pleiades |
| Brigit Pegeen Kelly | "The Dragon" | New England Review |
| Galway Kinnell | "When the Towers Fell" | The New Yorker |
| Carolyn Kizer | "After Horace" | Poetry |
| Jennifer L. Knox | "Love Blooms at Chimsbury After the War" | FIELD |
| Kenneth Koch | "Proverb" | The New York Review of Books |
| John Koethe | "Y2K (1933)" | Poetry |
| Ted Kooser | "In the Hall of Bones" | Third Coast |
| Philip Levine | "The Music of Time" | Rattle |
| J. D. McClatchy | "Jihad" | Poetry |
| W. S. Merwin | "To Zbigniew Herbert's Bicycle" | The New Yorker |
| Stanley Moss | "A History of Color" | American Poetry Review |
| Heather Moss | "Dear Alter Ego" | Croonenbergh's Fly |
| Paul Muldoon | "The Loaf" | The New York Review of Books |
| Peggy Munson | "Four Deaths That Happened Daily" | Spoon River Poetry Review |
| Marilyn Nelson | "Asparagus" | Rattapallax |
| Daniel Nester | "Poem for the Novelist Whom I Forced to Write a Poem" | Spinning Jenny |
| Naomi Shihab Nye | "What Happened to Everybody" | LUNA |
| Ishle Yi Park | "Queen Min Bi" | Barrow Street |
| Robert Pinsky | "Anniversary" | The Washington Post Magazine |
| Kevin Prufer | "What the Paymaster Said" | Witness |
| Ed Roberson | "Sequoia sempervirens" | Callaloo |
| Vijay Seshadri | "The Disappearances" | The New Yorker |
| Myra Shapiro | "For Nazim Hikmet in the Old Prison, Now a Four Seasons Hotel" | Rattapallax |
| Alan Shapiro | "Sleet" | Third Coast |
| Bruce Smith | "Song with a Child's Pacifier in It" | Boston Review |
| Charlie Smith | "There's Trouble Everywhere" | Poetry |
| Maura Stanton | "Translating" | Mid-American Review |
| Ruth Stone | "Lines" | PMS |
| James Tate | "The Restaurant Business" | New American Writing |
| William Tremblay | "The Lost Boy" | LUNA |
| Natasha Trethewey | "After Your Death" | New England Review |
| David Wagoner | "On Being Asked to Discuss Poetic Theory" | 88 |
| Ronald Wallace | "In a Rut" | Poetry Northwest |
| Lewis Warsh | "Premonition" | The World |
| Susan Wheeler | "In Sky" | Boston Review |
| Richard Wilbur | "Man Running" | The New Yorker |
| C. K. Williams | "The World" | The New Yorker |
| Terence Winch | "My Work" | New American Writing |
| David Wojahn | "Scrabble with Matthews" | Poetry |
| Robert Wrigley | "Clemency" | The Kenyon Review |
| Anna Ziegler | "After the Opening, 1932" | The Threepenny Review |
| Ahmos Zu-Bolton II | "Reading the Bones: a Blackjack Moses nightmare" | American Poetry Review |